Life and Remains of John Clare Part 1

Life and Remains of John Clare.

by J. L. Cherry.

DEDICATION

To HIS EXCELLENCY, THE LORD-LIEUTENANT OF IRELAND.

MY LORD:

Among the papers which John Clare, the "Peasant Poet" of our county, left behind him, was one in which he desired that the Editor of his "Remains" should dedicate them "to Earl Spencer, with the Author's last wishes."

That memorandum was written in the year 1825, when the poet was antic.i.p.ating, to use his own words, a speedy entrance into "the dark porch of eternity, whence none returns to tell the tale of his reception."

These melancholy forebodings were not realized, for although in a few years Clare became dead to the world, he lived on in seclusion to a patriarchal age. Meanwhile the Earl Spencer to whom he desired that his "Remains" should be dedicated pa.s.sed away, and the t.i.tle descended first to your lordship's uncle, then to your lordship's father, and lastly to your lordship. But through all these years the Earls Spencer were the steadfast and generous friends of the unhappy Poet, nor did your lordship's bounty cease with his life, but was continued to his widow.

In dedicating this volume to your lordship, as I now do, I am complying with the spirit and almost with the very letter of poor Clare's injunction.

I am, with unfeigned respect,

Your lordship's most obedient servant,

THE EDITOR.

INTRODUCTION

The Editor begs the reader to believe that he under took the compilation of this volume with diffidence and trepidation, lest by any defect of judgment he might do aught to diminish the reputation which John Clare has always enjoyed with the lovers of pastoral poetry. He trusts that the shortcomings of an unskilful workman will be forgotten in admiration of the gems for which he has been required to find a setting.

Shortly after Clare's death his literary "Remains" came into the possession of Mr. Taylor, of Northampton. The MSS included several hundreds of hitherto unpublished poems, more than a thousand letters addressed to Clare by his friends and contemporaries, (among them Charles Lamb, James Montgomery, Bloomfield, Sir Chas. A. Elton, Hood, Cary, Allan Cunningham, Mrs. Emmerson, Lord Radstock, &c), diary, pocket books in which Clare had jotted down pa.s.sing thoughts and fancies in prose and verse, a small collection of curious "Old Ballads" which he says he wrote down on hearing them sung by his father and mother, and numerous other valuable and interesting doc.u.ments.

This volume has been compiled mainly from these ma.n.u.scripts. The contents are divided into five sections, namely:--Life and Letters, Asylum Poems, Miscellaneous Poems, Prose Fragments, Old Ballads.

For much of the information relating to the Poet's earlier years the Editor is indebted to Mr. Martin's "Life of Clare," and the narratives of his youthful struggles and sufferings which appeared in the "Quarterly Review" and other periodicals at the time of the publication of his first volume. From that time the correspondence already mentioned became the basis of the biographical sketch, and was of the greatest value. In the few pages which relate to Clare's residence at Northampton, the Editor was enabled to write princ.i.p.ally from personal knowledge.

It is almost inc.u.mbent upon him to add, that in several important particulars he dissents from Mr. Martin, but he will not engage in the ungracious task of criticizing a work to which he is under an obligation.

While an inmate of the Northampton County Lunatic Asylum, Clare wrote more than five hundred poems. These were carefully preserved by Mr.

W. F. Knight, of Birmingham, a gentleman who for many years held a responsible office in that inst.i.tution, and was a kind-hearted friend of the unhappy bard. From this pile of ma.n.u.scripts the Editor has selected those which appear under the t.i.tle of Asylum Poems. The selection was a pleasing, mournful task. Again and again it happened that a poem would open with a bright, musical stanza giving promise of a finished work not unworthy of Clare's genius at its best. This would be followed by others in which, to quote a line from the "Village Minstrel," were "Half-vacant thoughts and rhymes of careless form." Then came deeper obscurity, and at last incoherent nonsense.

Of those which are printed, scarcely one was found in a state in which it could be submitted to the public without more or less of revision and correction.

The Miscellaneous Poems are chiefly fugitive pieces collected from magazines and annuals. One or two, referred to in the correspondence with James Montgomery, have been reprinted from the "Rural Muse," and there are a few which, like the Asylum Poems, have not been published before. "Maying; or, Love and Flowers," to which the Editor presumes specially to direct attention, is one of these.

The Prose Fragments are of minor literary importance, but they help to a knowledge and an understanding of the man. The Old Ballads have an interest of their own, apart from their a.s.sociation with Clare.

The majority are no doubt what they purport to be, but in two or three instances Clare's hand is discernible.

J. L. C.

Havelock-place, Hanley,

December, 1872.

LIFE, LETTERS, ETC.

HELPSTONE

John Clare, son of Parker and Ann Clare, commonly called "the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet," was born at Helpstone, near Peterborough, on the 13th of July, 1793. The lowliness of his lot lends some countenance to the saying of "Melancholy" Burton, that "poverty is the Muses' patrimony." He was the elder of twins, and was so small an infant that his mother used to say of him that "John might have been put into a pint pot." Privation and toil disabled his father at a comparatively early age, and he became a pauper, receiving from the parish an allowance of five shillings a week. His mother was of feeble const.i.tution and was afflicted with dropsy.

Clare inherited the low vitality of his parents, and until he reached middle age was subject to depressing ailments which more than once threatened his life, but after that time the failure of his mental powers caused him to be placed in circ.u.mstances favourable to bodily health, and in his old age he presented the outward aspect of a st.u.r.dy yeoman.

Having endowed Clare with high poetic sensibility, Nature capriciously placed him amid scenes but little calculated to call forth rapturous praises of her charms. "Helpstone," wrote an old friend of the poet, lately deceased, "lies between six and seven miles NNW of Peterborough, on the Syston and Peterborough branch of the Midland Railway, the station being about half a mile from the town. A not unpicturesque country lies about it, though its beauty is somewhat of the Dutch character; far-stretching distances, level meadows, intersected with grey willows and sedgy dikes, frequent spires, substantial watermills, and farm houses of white stone, and cottages of white stone also. Southward, a belt of wood, with a gentle rise beyond, redeems it from absolute flatness. Entering the town by the road from the east you come to a cross, standing in the midst of four ways. Before you, and to the left, stretches the town, consisting of wide streets or roadways, with irregular buildings on either side, interspersed with gardens now lovely with profuse blooms of laburnum and lilac."

The cottage in which John Clare was born is in the main street running south. The views of it which ill.u.s.trate his poems are not very accurate. They represent it as standing alone, when it is in fact, and evidently always has been, a cl.u.s.ter of two if not of three tenements. There are three occupations now. It is on the west side of the street, and is thatched. In the ill.u.s.tration to the second volume of "The Village Minstrel" (1821), an open stream runs before the door which is crossed by a plank. Modern sanitary regulations have done away with this, if it ever existed and was not a fancy of the artist.

LOCAL ATTACHMENTS

Clare, whose local attachments were intense, bewails in indignant verse the demolition of the Green:--

Ye injur'd fields, ye once were gay, When Nature's hand displayed Long waving rows of willows grey And clumps of hawthorn shade; But now, alas! your hawthorn bowers All desolate we see!

The spoiler's axe their shade devours, And cuts down every tree.

Not trees alone have owned their force, Whole woods beneath them bowed, They turned the winding rivulet's course, And all thy pastures plough'd.

Clare also wrote in the "Village Minstrel" in the following candid and artless strain, "a sort of defiant parody on the Highland poets", of the natural features of his native place:--

Swamps of wild rush-beds and sloughs' squashy traces, Grounds of rough fallows with thistle and weed.

Flats and low valleys of kingcups and daisies, Sweetest of subjects are ye for my reed: Ye commons left free in the rude rags of nature, Ye brown heaths beclothed in furze as ye be, My wild eye in rapture adores every feature, Ye are dear as this heart in my bosom to me.

O native endearments! I would not forsake ye, I would not forsake ye for sweetest of scenes: For sweetest of gardens that Nature could make me I would not forsake ye, dear valleys and greens: Though Nature ne'er dropped ye a cloud-resting mountain, Nor waterfalls tumble their music so free, Had Nature denied ye a bush, tree, or fountain, Ye still had been loved as an Eden by me.

And long, my dear valleys, long, long may ye flourish, Though rush-beds and thistles make most of your pride!

May showers never fail the green's daisies to nourish, Nor suns dry the fountain that rills by its side!

Your skies may be gloomy, and misty your mornings, Your flat swampy valleys unwholesome may be, Still, refuse of Nature, without her adornings Ye are dear as this heart in my bosom to me.

That the poet's attachment to his native place was deeprooted and unaffected was proved by the difficulty which he found in tearing himself from it in after years, and it is more than probable that the violence which, for the sake of others, he then did to his sensitive nature aggravated his const.i.tutional melancholy and contributed to the ultimate overthrow of his reason.

GRANNY BAINS

Clare's opportunities for learning the elements of knowledge were in keeping with his humble station. Parker Clare, out of his miserable and fluctuating earnings as a day labourer, paid for his child's schooling until he was seven years of age, when he was set to watch sheep and geese on the village heath. Here he made the acquaintance of "Granny Bains," of whom Mr. Martin, quoting, doubtless, from Clare's ma.n.u.script autobiography, says:--